The Colours of Glory and Mourning
by Avon
Summary: Sometimes when the world ends, you don't. Set post-series in a version of Avonverse. Written for the TWW-Minis colour prompt.
Above them, the sky had the threatening tones of an apocalypse movie. It hung low and oppressive over them, a brassy shade of orange and gold, fading into purple at the horizon. Sam was reminded of days of brushfires in California, while Josh looking at it could think only of the end of the world. Leaning on the white wooden pasture fence and watching the sunset and the two old horses grazing Josh said,

"It's the end of the world."

Sam took a shuddering breath. "Yeah…."

"I just… I meant the sky."

Sam nodded, and then looked down and away. Josh swallowed past the sudden tightening in his throat and kept watching the sunset. Pillars of cloud turned grey above them and streaks of pink and gold crept across the sky. The fire was lower now, burning down towards the horizon and the hills of Manchester.

Sam stirred, pushing away from the fence to turn to look at him. The twilight had bleached his face of colour and hidden his eyes in pools of shadow.

"I didn't," he said simply. "I meant him. Everything I've known for the last twenty years is in that house dying."

Josh shook his head. He'd come to the end of the world before and found out that you keep on living and hurting. Once his world had ended on a smoky front lawn, in bare feet and pyjama bottoms, beneath the spray of fire hoses and with the swoop and howl of sirens still ringing his ears. Once his world had ended in a crowded campaign office surrounded by telephones, posters and ribbon-decked badges, staring at the barely known girl who had just told him that his father was dead, with the salty taste of pretzels and the faint bitterness of cola still sharp in his mouth.

He reached out a hand to grip Sam's arm, too old now and with too many losses behind him to care what anyone thought.

"When President Bartlet dies the world isn't going to end; not the world and not even his world. Not unless we let it. All his ideas and everything we learnt from him… they're with us now. We have to take them forward."

Sam shivered a little and moved into the embrace. Together they had fought battles and wars, faced deaths and a hail of bullets, drunken beers in mid-western bars to hide the tears when relationships crashed and burned, seen friends crucified in the burning light of public opinion, plotted and dreamed across the width of a country and found the Real Thing.

"Josh, he's going to die, isn't he?" Sam asked, sounding even younger than he had as the gangly intern Josh had first met.

Josh moved so his arm was around Sam's shoulder and answered the question, not the words. Sam knew that President Bartlet was going to die. They'd known Bartlet was dying since February when he had called them a week and half after the inauguration; Josh thought he'd probably known since the day President Bartlet arrived for the inauguration. They'd known he would die soon when Abbey Bartlet told them in April that there was nothing left to try. They knew he was about to die when they were called to Manchester and then in the last day he had moved beyond their words. When they left the house his wife and daughters were stroking his arms and whispering prayers as he stirred in an unknowing restlessness.

"Yeah," Josh said softly. "I think he's going now."

Sam sighed a wordless agreement and they watched the sunset in silence.

The horizon burnt orange and red with the dying fire of the sun and above them the sky darkened to the faint purple of first night. As the last desperate blaze of colour slipped below the hills, Sam whispered unsteadily,

"So let all great men die, in a blaze of fire and beauty…. Let the earth burn up with his passing…. Let the colours of glory and of mourning make a shroud of the evening..."

"And let the silver light of stars celebrate his passing to his fathers," finished Toby's deeper voice from behind them.

They turned and looked at him. Toby nodded. In the silence, Josh watched him, while Sam looked up at the stars. The faint pinpricks of light brightened as the shadows deepened around them. The world became a montage of greys and blacks, with darkness pooling around the edges of buildings and between trees. A chill wind whispered through the grass and stirred the leaves above the house. In the dark of the garden, Josh saw two, three cool white lights blink on and chase each other in lazy circles.

"Come on," said Toby eventually. "Come on back to the house – all these trees are making me nervous."

As they fell into step beside Toby Josh glanced at Sam, who was turning for a last look at the dark smudges that were the Manchester foothills.

"Sam?"

"The world changes when the sun goes down – not ends."

It was Toby, surprisingly gentle, who patted his shoulder.


End file.
